Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to increase the availability of public transport in County Durham.

The Department for Transport is investing in the bus sector to deliver the ambitions of the National Bus Strategy to make bus services more reliable and cheaper. We are providing over £2 billion of funding for English Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) outside London to support the delivery of Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs), including the introduction of new services. This includes the recent announcement of an additional £1 billion redirected from HS2 to support bus services in the North and Midlands.

We have also announced that a new uplift of 60% will be added to Community Transport Operators’ (CTOs) Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) claims until 31 March 2025. On top of this, we have extended the £2 bus fare cap until the end of 2024, meaning we are investing nearly £600 million in total to cap bus fares.

North East Combined Authority and North of Tyne Combined Authority received £163,521,172 in Government funding to make improvements set out in their joint BSIP up to March 2025 in the first phase of BSIP funding. They have also been indicatively allocated £11.2 million in further BSIP funding from Network North for 2024/25. The allocations for future years will be published in due course.